An Unpardonable Liar Part 4

Hagar turned on her quickly, astonished, eager, his face shining with a look superadded to his artistic excitement.

She put her finger to her lip, and nodded backward to the other room. He understood. "Yes, I know," he said, "the light comedy manner." He waved his hand toward the drawing. "But is it not in the right vein?"

"It is painfully, horribly true," she said. She looked from him to the canvas, from the canvas to him, and then made a little pathetic gesture with her hands. "What a jest life is!"

"A game--a wonderful game," he replied, "and a wicked one, when there is gambling with human hearts."

Then he turned with her toward the other room. As he pa.s.sed her to draw aside the curtain she touched his arm with the tips of her fingers so lightly--as she intended--that he did not feel it. There was a mute, confiding tenderness in the action more telling than any speech. The woman had had a brilliant, varied, but lonely life. It must still be lonely, though now the pleasant vista of a new career kept opening and closing before her, rendering her days fascinating yet troubled, her nights full of joyful but uneasy hours. The game thus far had gone against her. Yet she was popular, merry and amiable!

She pa.s.sed composedly into the other room. Hagar greeted the young girl, gave her books and papers, opened the piano, called for some refreshments and presented both with a rose from a bunch upon the table. The young girl was perfectly happy to be allowed to sit in the courts without and amuse herself while the artist and his model should have their hour with pencil and canvas.

The two then went to the studio again, and, leaving the curtain drawn back, Hagar arranged Mrs. Detlor in position and began his task. He stood looking at the canvas for a time, as though to enter into the spirit of it again; then turned to his model. She was no longer Mrs. Detlor, but his subject, near to him as his canvas and the creatures of his imagination, but as a mere woman in whom he was profoundly interested (that at least) an immeasurable distance from him. He was the artist only now.

It was strange. There grew upon the canvas Mrs. Detlor's face, all the woman of it, just breaking through sweet, awesomely beautiful, girlish features; and though the work was but begun there was already that luminous tone which artists labor so hard to get, giving to the face a weird, yet charming expression.

For an hour he worked, then he paused. "Would you like to see it?" he said.

She rose eagerly, and a little pale. He had now sketched in more distinctly the figure of the man, changed it purposely to look more like Telford. She saw her own face first. It shone out of the canvas. She gave a gasp of pain and admiration. Then she caught sight of Telford's figure, with the face blurred and indistinct.

"Oh!" she said with a shudder. That--that is like him. How could you know?"

"If that is the man," he said, "I saw him this morning. Is his name Mark Telford?"

"Yes," she said, and sank into a chair. Presently she sprang to her feet, caught up a brush and put it into his hand. "Paint in his face. Quick!

Paint in his face. Put all his wickedness there."

Hagar came close to her. "You hate him?" he said, and took the brush.

She did not answer by word, but shook her head wearily, as to some one far off, expressing neither yes nor no.

"Why?" he said quietly--all their words had been in low tones, that they might not be heard--"why, do you wear that ring, then?"

She looked at her hand with a bitter, pitiful smile. "I wear it in memory of that girl who died very young"--she pointed to the picture--"and to remind me not to care for anything too much lest it should prove to be a lie." She nodded softly to the picture. "He and she are both dead; other people wear their faces now."

"Poor woman!" he said in a whisper. Then he turned to the canvas and, after a moment, filled in from memory the face of Mark Telford, she watching him breathlessly, yet sitting very still.

After some minutes he drew back and looked at it.

She rose and said: "Yes, he was like that; only you have added what I saw at another time. Will you hear the sequel now?"

He turned and motioned her to a seat, then sat down opposite to her.

She spoke sadly. "Why should I tell you? I do not know, except that it seemed to me you would understand. Yet I hope men like you forget what is best forgotten; and I feel--oh, do you really care to hear it?"

"I love to listen to you."

"That girl was fatherless, brotherless. There was no man with any right to stand her friend at the time--to avenge her--though, G.o.d knows, she wished for no revenge--except a distant cousin who had come from England to see her mother and herself; to marry her if he could. She did not know his motives; she believed that he really cared for her; she was young, and she was sorry for his disappointment. When that thing happened"--her eyes were on the picture, dry and hard--"he came forward, determined--so he said--to make the deceiver pay for his deceit with his life. It seemed brave, and what a man would do, what a southerner would do. He was an Englishman, and so it looked still more brave in him. He went to the man's rooms and offered him a chance for his life by a duel. He had brought revolvers. He turned the key in the door and then laid the pistols he had brought on the table. Without warning the other s.n.a.t.c.hed up a small sword and stabbed him with it. He managed to get one of the revolvers, fired, and brought the man down. The man was not killed, but it was a long time before he--Mark Telford there--was well again. When he got up, the girl"--

"Poor girl!"

"When he got up the girl was married to the cousin who had periled his life for her. It was madness, but it was so."

Here she paused. The silence seemed oppressive. Hagar, divining her thought, got up, went to the archway between the rooms and asked the young girl to play something. It helped him, he said, when he was thinking how to paint. He went back.

Mrs. Detlor continued. "But it was a terrible mistake. There was a valuable property in England which the cousin knew she could get by proving certain things. The marriage was to him a speculation. When she waked to that--it was a dreadful awakening--she refused to move in the matter. Is there anything more shameful than speculation in flesh and blood--the heart and life of a child?--he was so much older than she! Life to her was an hourly pain--you see she was wild with indignation and shame, and alive with a kind of grat.i.tude and reaction when she married him. And her life? Maternity was to her an agony such as comes to few women who suffer and live. If her child--her beautiful, n.o.ble child--had lived, she would, perhaps, one day have claimed the property for its sake. This child was her second love and it died--it died."

She drew from her breast a miniature. He reached out and, first hesitating, she presently gave it into his hand. It was warm--it had lain on her bosom. His hand, generally so steady, trembled. He raised the miniature to his own lips. She reached out her hand, flushing greatly.

"Oh, please, you must not!" she said.

"Go on, tell me all," he urged, but still held the miniature in his hand for a moment.

"There is little more to tell. He played a part. She came to know how coa.r.s.e and brutal he was, how utterly depraved.

"At last he went away to Africa--that was three years ago. Word came that he was drowned off the coast of Madagascar, but there is nothing sure, and the woman would not believe that he was dead unless she saw him so or some one she could trust had seen him buried. Yet people call her a widow--who wears no mourning" (she smiled bitterly) "nor can until"--

Hagar came to his feet. "You have trusted me," he said, "and I will honor your confidence. To the world the story I tell on this canvas shall be my own."

"I like to try and believe," she said, "that there are good men in the world. But I have not done so these many years. Who would think that of me?--I who sing merry songs, and have danced and am gay--how well we wear the mask, some of us!"

"I am sure," he said, "that there are better days coming for you. On my soul I think it."

"But he is here," she said. "What for? I cannot think there will be anything but misery when he crosses my path."

"That duel," he rejoined, the instinct of fairness natural to an honorable man roused in him; "did you ever hear more than one side of it?"

"No; yet sometimes I have thought there might be more than one side.

Fairfax Detlor was a coward; and whatever that other was,"--she nodded to the picture--"he feared no man."

"A minute!" he said "Let me make a sketch of it."

He got to work immediately. After the first strong outlines she rose, came to him and said, "You know as much of it as I do--I will not stay any longer."

He caught her fingers in his and held them for an instant. "It is brutal of me. I did not stop to think what all this might cost you."

"If you paint a notable picture and gain honor by it, that is enough," she said. "It may make you famous." She smiled a little wistfully. "You are very ambitious. You needed, you said to me once, a simple but powerful subject which you could paint in with some one's life' blood--that sounds more dreadful than it is * * * well? * * * You said you had been successful, but had never had an inspiration"--

"I have one!"

She shook her head. "Never an inspiration which had possessed you as you ought to be to move the public * * * well? * * * do you think I have helped you at all? I wanted so much to do something for you."

To Hagar's mind there came the remembrance of the pure woman who, to help an artist, as poverty stricken as he was talented, engaged on the "Capture of Ca.s.sandra," came into his presence as Lady G.o.diva pa.s.sed through the streets of Coventry, as hushed and as solemn. A sob shook in his throat--he was of few but strong emotions; he reached out, took her wrists in his hands, and held them hard. "I have my inspiration now," he said; "I know that I can paint my one great picture. I shall owe all to you. And for my grat.i.tude, it seems little to say that I love you--I love you, Marion."

She drew her hands away, turned her head aside, her face both white and red. "Oh, hush, you must not say it!" she said. "You forget; do not make me fear you and hate myself. * * * I wanted to be your friend--from the first, to help you, as I said; be, then, a friend to me, that I may forgive myself."

"Forgive yourself--for what? I wish to G.o.d I had the right to proclaim my love--if you would have it, dear--to all the world. * * * And I will know the truth, for I will find your husband, or his grave."

She looked up at him gravely, a great confidence in her eyes. "I wish you knew how much in earnest I am--in wishing to help you. Believe me, that is the first thought. For the rest I am--shall I say it?--the derelict of a life; and I can only drift. You are young, as young almost as I in years, much younger every other way, for I began with tragedy too soon."